Students Speak on Photoshop and Body Image

I came across this great discussion on the NY Times Learning Network, asking students to share what they think about the effect of photoshopped celebrity images in the media.  The blog mentions the attempts by several countries to force advertisers to reveal when an image has been altered using a scale of 1-5 for the degree of alteration. 

I read through the first page of comments (there are four pages at this point) and it was both heartbreaking and hopeful.  Girls talked about how terrible they would feel about themselves after exposure to a retouched, impossible face and figure in a magazine.  Boys and girls both talked about the beauty of "real" people.  Instead of ivory tower academics discussing the theoretical impact of false beauty standards, here are the targets crying "foul!" all by themselves. 

It's a good read when we start to get discouraged about fighting the good fight for body acceptance.